The release by the local Customs Administration of two containers of what is believed to be “substandard” foods to an ‘importer’ who is set to face the courts on related charges, without the consent of the Government Analyst-Food and Drugs Department (GAFDD) represents a sharp departure from an existing agreement between the two agencies, GAFDD Director Marlan Cole has told the Stabroek Business.
And even as the Department seeks to track down the contents of the two containers which it says may already have been released into the local retail system, Cole told this newspaper that his Department will be communicating with the Customs authorities regarding the unauthorized release of the two containers.
Cole’s comment was made after the persistence of a considerably under-resourced GAFDD led recently to the unearthing of four containers of expired assorted food items consigned to a Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara addressee.
Yesterday, following the Department’s disclosure in a media release that the four containers of “substandard” food items had been denied entry Cole told Stabroek News in a brief comment that the seizure of the substandard foods was a “positive development” for the GAFDD “particularly since some of these breakthroughs come only after lengthy periods of painstaking effort.”
The GAFDD media release names the importer as Faizal Asif Iqbal Alli of Lot 83 Mon Repos Housing Scheme, East Coast Demerara and says that the move to refuse entry for the four containers comes only after “several consumers’ complaints and many attempts by the department’s Inspectors to conduct inspections and locate several bonds operated by Mr. Alli”, a circumstance confirmed to Stabroek Business by Cole.
It was against this backdrop, Cole said that the GAFDD made a decision to conduct a deeper probe of the four seized containers.
When Stabroek News spoke to Alli on Wednesday evening at his business premises, he said he is being penalized for something he has no knowledge of.
The businessman said for all the years he has been in business he has been providing items countrywide and he has never received any complaints from any of his customers.
“…Nobody never complain. I have tons of customers,” he said.
Rather, he said whenever there are reports of expired products, an exchange is done and he disposes of them.
Alli also said that he only has one bond which he operates and not several as is being claimed by the department.
The GAFDD’s probe of this significant breach of food importation regulations, however, does not stop there. It was following the seizure of the four containers that it was learnt that two other containers also “bearing substandard items” and consigned to Alli had been “electronically released from the Port of entry,” presumably by the Customs Administration, without the “consent or approval” of the GAFDD. This circumstance, the GAFDD’s release said, gives rise to the need to carry out urgent inspections at retail premises across Guyana with a view to unearthing retail consignments of the substandard foods that would have already been distributed to retail outlets. This newspaper has learnt that the illegal importation of sub-standard foods, as in this instance, is linked to a considerable retail outlet through which shop owners in residential communities receive consignments for sale. Cole himself declined to comment on this.
The GAFDD’s release alluded to the removal of expiry dates and the machine-assisted insertion of tampered ones and the deliberate switching of items from their original packaging. A source claiming some measure of familiarity with the ‘processing’ of expired confirmed that where large consignments are concerned it is indeed a sophisticated and time-consuming process and that “the major part of it” takes place even before the goods are shipped here. The source agreed that in the circumstances effectively addressing the problem was almost certainly beyond the GAFDD alone and would have to necessitate foreign help.
What also may have reduced the effectiveness of the GAFDD is what is believed to be the historic difficulties in the relationship between that Department and the Customs Administration, a circumstance which the GAFDD has commented on before. What appears to lie at the root of this is the lack of clout on the part of the GAFDD in matters pertaining to inspection of goods at ports of entry arising out of the agency’s lack of manpower to undertake such inspections.
Apart from issuing an alert on the matter the GAFDD said in its release that it will be moving to “exchange communication and details of this practice with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency” which, it said, “attested to the wholesomeness of the products on a Health Certificate that was used to facilitate the trade of the items from Canada to Guyana.” The GAFDD also says that it will be moving to share this development with the National Food Safety and Control Committee Meeting (NFSCCM) at a November 12th meeting. “Legal proceedings will now be instituted by the Department’s prosecutor against Mr. Alli for knowingly or deliberately facilitating the importation and release of substandard articles of food to be used by the general populace of Guyana,” the release added.
